Howdy,First year pixel virgin. Running Pi3 with FPP and 2 E682 controllers. No music this first year just a 15 minute repeating loop that worked out pretty good (sequenced in Vixen).

The display ran great the first two nights then noticed on the third night the one controller kept running even though the sequence schedule had stopped 20 minutes prior. I rebooted the Pi and it stopped immediately.

All devices are on a dedicated subnet so they are not impeded by other network traffic. Everything is hard-wired (no wifi except for when I want to access FPP or the controllers with my laptop or phone).

Do you guys have some kind of schedule that reboots the Pi say nightly? I was thinking of putting something in cron but was worried that it would effect FPP - was hoping that there was some setting I was missing as I don't like pulling the rug out from under it so abruptly.

Is this common that a controller would behave this way? By the way, all devices (controllers, ethernet switch and FPP), are on 24/7. The only things that I turn off in off-hours are the satellite power supplies around the yard.

The answer is No and the second part of that would be why are you looking to do this? I have a master that has been powered up since the 2016 show except for when I have been working on my wiring closet. I have 10 remotes that also run continously during the season. Unless there is a specific reason to shutdown or even reboot I do not bother with it. Got to many other things to deal with than to go looking for trouble.

My answer is Yes. I do schedule a shutdown every night. I do it using the shutdown scripts that Jon mentioned. The reason I do shutdown instead of reboot is because I have the power on a timer and that is the reason I schedule a "clean" shutdown of the FPP's before the power turns off. They reboot the next day when the timer turns the power back on.

I wouldn't mind having the FPP's run all the time but I don't want to run a separate power distribution for just the FPP's. The primary reason I don't leave the power on all night is because "smart" pixels have power going to them all the time whether they are on or off. Even when there is no show and no lights running, power is still running though all the wires. Where I live, Winter is the rainy season and everything gets wet. Although I try to make everything waterproof its hard to make it 100%. So I schedule a power shutdown when the show it not running. Since this means I'll also be killing power to the FPP's I have a shutdown event in my playlist at the end of the night.

Logged

xLights and Vixen3 for sequencing / FPP for scheduling and playing / Falcon controllers for pixels / homemade controllers for everything else

Winter is also a rainy season here, but in 11 years of doing animated lighting I have only once lost anything due to water and that was because the device fell into a puddle. But maybe I'm lucky. YMMV.

Thanks for all the feedback. Glad to hear about the high reliability of the Pi/ Falcon. The first couple nights I had a schedule mis-match (with my automation system), that was shutting down part of my power supplies before the display was completed and I thought it was the Pi messing up. Ran the last 2 nights with no issues so I will let it ride without making any modifications unless I find issues moving forward. Thanks again!Charlie-